This reminds me of the time several years ago when my young daughter and I were bicycling a local trail and she spotted a hatchling snapping turtle on the pavement. If you’ve ever seen one you know that they’re simultaneously ugly, cute, tiny, and pugnacious, and she was so entranced that she insisted on not only moving it off the bikepath to safety, but to help it complete its journey to water as well. So we parked the bikes and, with the aid of a discarded soft-drink cup, she carried it a couple hundred yard to the nearest water, a small creek. We found a spot next to a bridge where she could climb down the bank to the creek, and she proudly released the little turtle into water for the first time. I had barely begun my impression of Bill Murray doing ‘Born Free’ when to our horror a huge bullfrog jumped out of the shadows ate gobbled the little guy up! Trauma and bawling ensued and it took some time and some fancy arguments from authority (as both father and turtle scientist) to convince the poor kid that the bullfrog would certainly spit out an angry snapping turtle and that she had indeed helped it instead of caused its demise. oy.

Is that a ring necked dove, C. risoria? If so, it was gonna die anyway. The white morph is easy pickings for just about every predator.

If you want to have a dove release, find a homing pigeon breeder who has a flock of white(ish) pigeons. The pigeons will head straight back to their loft after circling a few times and none are likely to be lost. There are commercial services that do this a lot of places and they are usually cheaper than the places that breed ring-necks because they can reuse the same pigeons over and over.

they are usually cheaper than the places that breed ring-necks because they can reuse the same pigeons over and over.

Look I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but this is exactly the problem with how we treat animals in this society. They aren’t fellow living being to respected and cared for, but disposable things to be used and – either once, or over and over again. Enslave the bird to entertain, murder to the pig to eat his flesh, and rape the cow to drink her milk.

Are you sure rape is the right word?
You know if we didn’t eat pigs, cows etc they wouldn’t exist at all, right? We’d have just wiped them out.
I’m all for ethical farming practices and I buy free range meat and eggs but murder is a concept that applies to human beings.

The pigeon has clearly died for a greater cause. The important thing is that the Pope is actually doing something concrete to promote world peace. All that praying won’t work by itself, you know – you need a sacrifice or two to make it work properly. Just watch all the soldiers, militias, dictators and terrorists hand in their weapons in the next few weeks. The pigeon hasn’t died in vain. And anyway, if it truly repented of its sins before taking off, its gone to Pigeon Heaven (it’s a bit like Trafalgar Square in London, but without all the buses.)

This thread took a turn for the creepy. So if having domestic animals is slavery but they wouldn’t survive in the wild, should we extinct the domestic varieties so shit can be more “natural” for you? I guess this looks like Thunderdome time for you guys. Go punch some hedz. Have fun.

Yes, indeed, it is an outrage the naked apes have made smallpox effectively extinct, and have driven polio to some of the furtherest reaches of the planet! This is slavery in its most brutal form, exterminating bugs just because they cause naked apes a minor annoyance. The solution is clear: Ban vaccines! Ban doctors! Restore smallpox to the wild! Stop hunting polio! Restore nature and disease to its rightful place!!!1!

There is surely no issue better guaranteed to produce fatuous nonsense on both sides than animal rights.

First we have dysomniak, darwinian socialist, referring to milking a cow as rape and killing a pig as murder – dysomniak, how do you feel about lions murdering antelopes? Surely if killing any animal is murder, we have a moral duty to prevent predation of any kind?

Then from the other side, we have trina’s:

You know if we didn’t eat pigs, cows etc they wouldn’t exist at all, right?

Yes, and if it hadn’t been for Hitler and WWII, hundreds of millions of those alive today would never have been born!!!!1one!!eleventy!! Pigs and cows, it’s safe to say, don’t give a shit whether or not pigs and cows continue to exist, let alone agree to make the noble sacrifice of being slaughtered and eaten in order to ensure it. If the suffering inflicted by raising animals for food is morally problematic, hypotheticals about the extinction of the varieties we raise (which are, be it noted, not species distinct from their wild forbears or from feral varieties) cannot possibly make it less so, because the continuing existence of those varieties perpetuates that suffering.

There are certainly grounds for objecting to dysomniak’s use of the words ‘rape’ and ‘murder’, but xe is still talking about human behaviour. Why do you feel it necessary to make the reductio ad absurdum leap to asking about other animals’ behaviour? Am I missing some Pharyngula history here?

Put another way: If I objected to a person’s cruel teasing of a dog, would a valid response be ‘how do you feel about cats toying with their prey?’.

FWIW, the gull and hoodie crow have likely seen this doves-out-the-window game before, and tasted dove before. There are plenty of common, street-wise pigeons that they’re ignoring to go straight for these hand-reared offerings.
Unlikely that two non-apex predators just appeared…

Some years ago, I was at the Flatiron & Firkin pub, and popped out for a ciggy. In the little park out back, pigeons were mulling around a recent breadcrumb drop, when a young gull ventured in for a piece of the action. A large pigeon just walked up and whacked the gull with its left wing. Exit gull. Never seen that before or since.

Obviously, consciousness cannot exist independent of energy/matter since to exist and to do work it would need energy/matter.

Activity implies energy at work, order is a sign of consciousness.

Both are inseparable and work in varying degrees in a system.

As such does energy/matter has both an experiential or a subjective (sentient) aspect as well as a quantifiable or a material (objective) side which would then logically account for the finely tuned constants of the universe and for the appearance of living entities that “evolve” in keeping with the laws of biology?

The origin of life and evolution in this holistic sense could refer to a series of punctuated emergences of the involved sentient principle in energy/matter field instead of basing all explanations of sentience on a paradoxical insentient energy/matter basis “somehow” giving rise to sentience?

Thus, in this logic, consciousness is a naturally inhering subjective aspect of the universal energy/matter field.

As far as the question of a personal god is concerned, well, the scriptural renditions are mumbo jumbo and are not worthy of second thought. At the most, god or gods could mean ancient individual mental construct(s) that has/have taken root in the subconscient of the collectivity from where it/they rise(s)into the surface consciousness under the impulse of environmental impulses founded on fear, indoctrination or tradition only to subside and dissolve back into the subconscious mind field once one realizes the folly of worshipping a mere mental construct just in the same manner as say a wave rises from an ocean only to subside back into the body of water from which it arose as a temporary form after some time when the momentum is weakened.

Every observation/deduction/experience points to the inevitable conclusion that energy/matter is conscious as explained in my previous post above.

For consciousness to somehow arise from insentient energy/matter by a series of pull and push forces is a most shocking paradox which cannot be accounted for logically, experimentally and experientially.

Scientists, who take their stand on insentient energy/matter, cannot answer questions on the subjective aspect of existence except, like everyone else, to experience subjectivity as manifested in the individual consciousness.

The objective method of analysis – the scientific method – as applicable to mind-matter studies can yield inferential results that simply tell us that energy/matter has become capable of manifesting its (innate) consciousness at so and so frequency of vibration or at so and so level of complexity of the system – open, closed or isolated – or that in a sentient entity like say a human being that certain psychotropic substances on crossing the blood-brain barrier can modify cognitive patterns by acting on the CNS thereby influencing conscious behavior or that damage to the neurons results in impaired mental functions or that the death of neurons leads to the subsidence/suspension/cessation of mental activities – all of what I’ve typed above indicates that energy/matter is conscious or that consciousness cannot exist separately from stuff (energy/matter).

The moot question is – how is it possible for energy/matter to be conscious?

Is there, at a deeper level of QM, a “sensing” (cognitive) principle inherent in energy/matter that accounts for energy/matter becoming conscious? How did it get there, or how does it inhere there and at what frequency of vibration does the QM force field, at that fundamental level of universal existence, manifest its latent degree (s) of consciousness?

Consciousness cannot be isolated from a sentient system and studied like say charge, mole, peptides etc nor can it be created from scratch in the lab.

So, consciousness can only be manipulated in the human brain via electrochemical methods but this simply indicates that energy/matter is intrinsically conscious.

Till today, we see that only a living being can bring forth another “like” entity (offspring) via sexual method or hybrids like mules, ligers and hobras can be engineered by mating genetically close species or procreation is possible in the lab by invitro or cloning technologies involving extractions (fluids, cells) from a living being.

If insentient energy/matter can “somehow” produce sentience as scientists claim then it’s not only a shocking paradox since the thumb rule is “like produces like” and besides something cannot arise from nothing. If we abide by this paradoxical hypothesis that science has built then it stands on the same absurd level of the religious claim of creation from nothing engineered “somehow” by an extra-cosmic god lacking a causal link with the created energy, matter and consciousness.

If we abide by this paradoxical hypothesis that science has built then it stands on the same absurd level of the religious claim of creation from nothing engineered “somehow” by an extra-cosmic god lacking a causal link with the created energy, matter and consciousness.

Not even close to being on the same level. The religious version requires that a complex, fully-sentient creator-being should spontaneously form, or should (in some versions) somehow pre-exist as a never-formed, ever-existing, first-cause. Big-bang theory requires merely the formation, “from nothing,” of a few “standardised” types of particles, whose interactions are forced upon them by their differing properties.

The religious version, therefore, requires a much more bizarre and complicated something-from-nothing event than the non-religious.

(Oh and of course matter/energy can become conscious. What do you think you’re made of? Ectoplasm?)

You do know the doves eluded their assailants? If you’re going to find meaning in the attack

PZ doesn’t find meaning in the attack. He’s an atheist! He doesn’t believe the crows and the gulls were sent by a god!

PZ finds Schadenfreude in the fact that the crows and the gulls pooped on the pope’s party. :-)

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Sir,

No. :-) By posting this here, in public, you’re talking to everyone who can find this site and read English. That’s easily a billion people.

Could energy/matter be conscious?

Well, no, because consciousness is a rather complex activity that one elementary particle can’t do alone.

order is a sign of consciousness

Not in the least. Crystals are formed by nothing but electrostatic attraction and repulsion. If you shake a box with big and small things in it, the big ones will end up on top, because the small ones can more easily fall through the gaps between the big ones than the big ones can fall through the gaps between the small ones: gravity alone can create order. Or consider why wax freezes from the bottom while water freezes from the top. I could go on for hours!

As such does energy/matter has both an experiential or a subjective (sentient) aspect as well as a quantifiable or a material (objective) side

There’s no reason to think so, to put it mildly.

which would then logically account for the finely tuned constants of the universe

What, how would energy account for the constants of physics? It didn’t make them!

Besides, there’s no reason to think they’re finely tuned. Victor Stenger has done the mathematical experiment: if you mess with just one constant, almost all the resulting universes are indeed inhabitable for anything similar to life-as-we-know-it; but if you mess with two constants at once, 21 % of the resulting universes are inhabitable.

and for the appearance of living entities that “evolve” in keeping with the laws of biology?

Why the scare quotes? And frankly, biology has no irreducible laws; only physics does.

The origin of life and evolution in this holistic sense could refer to a series of punctuated emergences of the involved sentient principle in energy/matter field instead of basing all explanations of sentience on a paradoxical insentient energy/matter basis “somehow” giving rise to sentience?

There’s no reason to assume the existence of such a “principle”; your use of “field” here doesn’t make sense; and there’s nothing paradoxical about “giving rise to sentience” – mind is what the brain does.

Every observation/deduction/experience points to the inevitable conclusion that energy/matter is conscious as explained in my previous post above.

That is plainly not true. Please explain why you think otherwise.

For consciousness to somehow arise from insentient energy/matter by a series of pull and push forces is a most shocking paradox which cannot be accounted for logically, experimentally and experientially.

You seem to think that we believe consciousness is an all-or-nothing affair, a thing that suddenly, miraculously, sprang into existence one day.

Not so. It’s gradual. Is a chimpanzee conscious? An elephant, a pigeon, a crow, a dolphin? A dog, a cat? A gull? A bat? An alligator? What does “consciousness” even mean?

Scientists, who take their stand on insentient energy/matter, cannot answer questions on the subjective aspect of existence except, like everyone else, to experience subjectivity as manifested in the individual consciousness.

“The religious version, therefore, requires a much more bizarre and complicated something-from-nothing event than the non-religious.

……………………………….

SENTIENT (JOEL EZRA): No, the paradox created by science which posits consciousness emerging from insentient energy/matter stands, as stated by me in my previous post .

This bizarre claim of science – of insentient energy/matter somehow giving rise to sentience – is equivalent to the religious claim of creation from nothing by an anthropopathatic god.

This is akin to a case of making something from a void, in this case creating sentience from insentience, which is paradoxical, illogical and a misleading attempt on the part of science to claim that it has discovered the mechanism of sentience through molecular interactions that lack this basis of sentience.

Similarly, religious freaks claim the creation of the cosmos from nothing or from a void.

So, just as there exists religious superstition, there exists scientific superstition, as well.

The point I am trying to drive home is that sentience can arise only from a field of sentience that inheres in energy/matter as the subjective aspect.

DAZ: “(Oh and of course matter/energy can become conscious. What do you think you’re made of? Ectoplasm?)”

SENTIENT (JOEL EZRA): Energy/matter can only become conscious if consciousness as the subjective aspect of energy/matter exists in involved form, or as a naturally existing principle, in energy/matter field. As a result it (consciousness) then begins to emerge in energy/matter as energy/matter gets more and more organized so as to serve as fit media to manifest the emerging subjective side which on reaching a critical emergent level accounts for the appearance of increasing order in nature and of the phenomenon of sentience and later the gradual appearance of the species.

Q & A WITH JOEL:

1) Can sentience be created from scratch/raw chemicals in the lab? NO !

2) If all the molecular systems needed to support/create an organism are given ready-made to a scientist, would he be capable of making these lab-assembled molecular ensembles sentient or create a living organism from them? NO!

3) Can a dead organism be brought back to life using electrochemical or any other physical means? NO!

4) Can consciousness or the sentient principle be isolated from any cell of the body or especially from the brain where the consciousness-in-energy/matter appears to be concentrated? NO!

5) Can consciousness be extracted from one brain and transplanted into another brain? NO!

6) Does consciousness (a subjective state of energy/matter) have objective properties that can be studied mathematically, chemically or electrochemically? NO!

1) Do you believe thinking beings can have varying levels of consciousness?

SENTIENT (JOEL EZRA): Yes. Human beings have in them instinct, reason and intuition.

There’s the frontal consciousness that’s outwardly focussed; there’s a subconscient that records all our experiences; there is an instinctual consciousness that deals with body needs; there’s dream state of consciousness which is mostly subconscious in working but at times it is intuitive; there exists a thinking consciousness that cogitates and reflects; there’s an emotional consciousness that is based on desires and finer personality characteristics like compassion, kindness, love, selflessness, etc; there is an ego-centric consciousness that determines narrow individuality that gives the impression that the individual is cut off from the universal currents; there’s an intellectual aspect of consciousness that deals with logic, inferences and analysis; there’s a sensing consciousness that takes cognizance of happenings within and without; there’s an inspirational or an intuitional consciousness that is concerned with lightning-fast responses that seem to bypass the logical mind and appear as a flash in the mind; there’s a body consciousness proper to the functioning of the organ systems; and, if I may add, given my exposure to yoga, there exists a nonlocal consciousness that is omnijective and more…

ANRI: Can they move from one level to another (such as, for example, an infant becoming an adult or a progressively damaged brain resulting in a coma)?

SENTIENT: I fail to comprehend the meaning of that sentence.

ANRI: Do you believe that brain growth and brain damage are physical processes?

SENTIENT: At a deeper level of the functional energy field permeating the brain, the subjective side (which is the conscient aspect of energy/matter) that’s apparently imprinted in genes and in neurons could serve as some sentient causal mechanism that could determine brain development and its damage if the energy level within gets disordered or if the cells turn out defective/malformed in structure. I have observed that during a willed OBE, common to experienced yogis, the energy with its innate consciousness lifts outside the body with a slender link maintained with the body to facilitate its re-entry.

ARNI: If you accept all of these things, you know that consciousness can and does depend on nothing more than brain structure and basic electro-chemical reactions.

SENTIENT: Energy is evidently conscious and so various degrees of organization are seen in nature and in body.

ARNI: To put it another way: if all matter was conscious, FMRI’s would be able to tell us what our plush toys were thinking. Do you believe your teddy bear actually loved you…?

SENTIENT: LOL. Consciousness being the subjective aspect of energy/matter gets manifested in varying degrees in different physical forms and so your teddy bear would hardly manifest anything, if at all, of the indwelling consciousness in its matter by which I mean the consciousness in the matter of the teddy would reside in a highly involved state which would make it appear insentient for all practical purposes, while you being a far more complex or a highly organized biochemical system thus the innate consciousness would emerge to a far greater degree in your brain-body system making you visibly sentient. As such there’s a vast gap in consciousness and in degree of organization between your teddy and your kind self and so the subtle effects of consciousness at work will be imperceptible.

Obviously, even if a scientist is given all the molecular chains needed to form a living entity, like say a pig, yet the assembled molecular system will not manifest sentience despite all the biochemical inputs being in place since the subjective side of energy (consciousness) needs to be activated by some means unknown to science. An entire genome by itself is not sentient unless supported by the correct frequency of vibration of the system’s energy content with its subjective aspect (consciousness) emerging in degrees that manifests as sentience.

Sorry, I had overlooked your latest comment. But you’ve overlooked several of mine, too…

Q & A WITH JOEL:

1) Can sentience be created from scratch/raw chemicals in the lab? NO !

Sentience is an activity. It’s something certain kinds of brain do.

2) If all the molecular systems needed to support/create an organism are given ready-made to a scientist, would he be capable of making these lab-assembled molecular ensembles sentient or create a living organism from them? NO!

Depends on your definition of “living”. It works quite wonderfully with viruses. The first completely synthetic bacterium is in progress.

3) Can a dead organism be brought back to life using electrochemical or any other physical means? NO!

That’s because you can’t repair damaged cells with such crude means, duh.

4) Can consciousness or the sentient principle be isolated from any cell of the body or especially from the brain where the consciousness-in-energy/matter appears to be concentrated? NO!

5) Can consciousness be extracted from one brain and transplanted into another brain? NO!

Consciousness is not a thing, it’s an activity, and your sentient principle doesn’t exist. Consciousness is not a substance that is located in the brain, it’s an activity of the brain.

6) Does consciousness (a subjective state of energy/matter) have objective properties that can be studied mathematically, chemically or electrochemically? NO!

That’s nonsense. It’s not hard to tell from MRI if someone is conscious or unconscious.

7) How does consciousness look, smell, taste etc? LOL.

The only funny thing here is your silly belief that we believe that consciousness is a thing.

At a deeper level of the functional energy field permeating the brain

There is no such field.

the subjective side (which is the conscient aspect of energy/matter) that’s apparently imprinted in genes and in neurons

This is just technobabble.

I have observed that during a willed OBE, common to experienced yogis, the energy with its innate consciousness lifts outside the body with a slender link maintained with the body to facilitate its re-entry.

Nope. The brain is mostly concerned with itself – most of its nerve cells are connected only to each other, and the rest mostly to each other, not to sense organs. This connection can be shut down; this happens every time you sleep.

You have made yourself dream.

This is an accomplishment to which I honestly congratulate you. It’s much like, say, figure skating. Don’t misinterpret it: you didn’t observe anything during that dream – you dreamt.

The phenomenon of consciousness indicates that consciousness exists, and there is every reason – logical, experimental and experiential – to suppose that it is qualitatively irreducible to mathematical description of any kind. An array of numbers, no matter how elaborate, can tell us nothing about a person’s conscious awareness.

1) An array of numbers, no matter how elaborate, can tell us nothing about a person’s conscious awareness.

Not true.

Or what did you think MRI and PET are?

a cause must be at least as great as its effect in terms of information content

How so? How does gravity contain anywhere near as much information as the avalanche it causes or the galaxy it maintains?

Obviously, even if a scientist is given all the molecular chains needed to form a living entity, like say a pig, yet the assembled molecular system will not manifest sentience despite all the biochemical inputs being in place since the subjective side of energy (consciousness) needs to be activated by some means unknown to science.

Why do you keep asserting such falsehoods? Consciousness isn’t switched on, it develops.

An entire genome by itself is not sentient

Correct.

unless supported by the correct frequency of vibration of the system’s energy content

Wrong. Energy contents aren’t things that can vibrate.

with its subjective aspect (consciousness) emerging in degrees that manifests as sentience.

If consciousness “develops” then from what does it develop? From insentient molecular activity? LOL.

This naive assertion of consciousness developing could only mean that insentient molecular/chemical activity “somehow” manifests consciousness which is paradoxical and an absurdity.

Why can we not generate sentience from raw chemicals or cause sentience to manifest in molecular systems in the lab?

A synthetic virus or microbe will not manifest life on its own since the correct frequency of vibration in its energy field that is needed to kick-start the cognitive aspect of energy remains dormant and will remain so unless the synthetic virus is implanted in a living organism.

Does consciousness develop from non-consciousness? LOL.

Paradox!

A better way of referring to consciousness is that it emerges as a phenomenon in energy/matter with a greater and a greater degree of organization of energy/matter which means that energy has a conscious aspect aside from the known fact that energy has its quantifiable objective aspect which is recorded as matter, mass, motion, etc.

Scientists should isolate the necessary chemicals from a living organism and then recombine them in the lab in an attempt to create life in a test tube. If sentience is merely atomic activity or a chemical combination then it should be child’s play to engineer life forms in the lab by combining these chemical ensembles but this cannot be done since the cognitive property of energy, unlike its its readily visible objective aspect which is atoms, molecules, etc, lies at a more fundamental frequency of vibration which remains beyond the purview of superficial scientific methods. Only when these fundamental frequencies of vibration of energy that’re more cognitive in nature surface in atoms or in molecules does the system become visibly sentient.

The phenomenon of inspiration or of intuition implies the person’s logical faculty is incapable of solving a vexing question that cannot be successfully solved through the inferential mode. The necessary knowledge and logical inputs are simply badly arranged in the logical faculty and need to be put in the correct order/perspective. When this rearranging is done, the entire answer manifests like a flash in the mind at a time when one least expects to solve the question. What happens is this – the consciousness of the energy/matter of the brain allows the apparently insolvable question with its bits of answers that were attempted in the past to settle into the subconscious where it remains dormant until a brain state that’s conducive to relaxation brings the subconscious into direct contact with a superior range of vibration of the conscious energy field permeating the brain where the answer to the question is correctly assembled by drawing on all the disarrayed or partially arranged possibilities that lie imprinted as previously reasoned out scattered bits of information in the person’s subconscious and in his memory. Everything is put in the right order and given the correct perspective in ways that had surpassed the logical faculty and after this rearranging process is completed the slightest trigger causes it to fully and with lightning speed manifest as a complete solution in the thinking mind of the concerned person.

As always, you say “somehow” when you don’t understand how it works – but the scientists who actually work on this stuff have a pretty good grasp on it!

Learn some neurobiology!

Why can we not generate sentience from raw chemicals or cause sentience to manifest in molecular systems in the lab?

Because it’s too much work. Making a pretty complex brain from scratch would be an immense task.

A synthetic virus or microbe will not manifest life on its own since the correct frequency of vibration in its energy field that is needed to kick-start the cognitive aspect of energy remains dormant and will remain so unless the synthetic virus is implanted in a living organism.

No. There is no difference between synthetic viruses and natural ones. Look it up.

Life, too, is a matter of degree. Whether viruses are alive depends on how strict your definition is!

And stop making shit up about vibration! Or cite your sources at least.

Does consciousness develop from non-consciousness? LOL.

The argument from personal incredulity is a logical fallacy.

A better way of referring to consciousness is that it emerges as a phenomenon in energy/matter with a greater and a greater degree of organization of energy/matter which means that energy has a conscious aspect aside from the known fact that energy has its quantifiable objective aspect which is recorded as matter, mass, motion, etc.

Evidence?

a cause must be at least as great as its effect in terms of information content – examples genome, pre-big bang state of singularity, etc.

Is that what you consider an answer to my question about avalanches and the Brazil-nut effect? An ignorant statement about genomes and a purely hypothetical statement about what there was “before” the Big Bang?

Are you kidding me?

It’s almost trivially true that each genome contains less information than the organism that contains it. It doesn’t contain information about the influences of the environment, for example.

Scientists should isolate the necessary chemicals from a living organism and then recombine them in the lab in an attempt to create life in a test tube. If sentience is merely atomic activity or a chemical combination then it should be child’s play to engineer life forms in the lab by combining these chemical ensembles

What exactly do you mean by “sentience”?

INTUITION

Trial and error based on earlier errors and innate tendencies.

superior range of vibration of the conscious energy field permeating the brain

Stop making word salad. Show us first that the things you talk about actually exist!

Everything is put in the right order and given the correct perspective in ways that had surpassed the logical faculty and after this rearranging process is completed the slightest trigger causes it to fully and with lightning speed manifest as a complete solution in the thinking mind of the concerned person.

If only idiots who’ve overdosed on deepities could be made to try to describe these “energy fields” in thermodynamic terms or, if that’s too hard, give the dimensions for the frequency of these “vibrations.” Or at the very least, link to some source that does that for them.

And what “metaphor” is this? What is this event supposed to mean? Doves released by a pope and some childen get attacked by a seagull and a crow… is this supposed to be some sign? Of what? Divine retribution? I would thnk atheists had more sense than that.

Who would’ve thought such an innocent little post about a dove being attacked by a seagull would lead to interesting topics like: cow milking equals rape, and vibrating energy fields are responsible for consciousness/sentience.

For those who are “confused” I wasn’t saying that milking is rape (that’s merely aussault), it’s the forcible insemination that’s rape. You didn’t really think mammals just walked around secreting milk all the time did you?

Thanks for clearing that up. As a vegetarian (trying for vegan) I can understand where you’re coming from and, I agree, we do have a problem in our society with how we treat animals. I just thought it was a bit interesting to be commenting on animal cruelty in what seemed like a lighthearted post, but I can see how you got there. Sorry for lumping you in with our vibrating energy field friend.

If artificial insemination of dairy cows is going to be compared to raping them, doesn’t it first require evidence that dairy cows are sufficiently sapient to be able to give informed consent? Regardless, this (and sentient’s little word-salad circle jerk) should be taken to Thunderdome.

@microraptor, so then you’re okay with people having sex with human infants? After all, they can’t give “informed consent” either. And no, I’m not taking this to thunderdome. This is a natural tangent from the subject of the post and if I’m going to take the effort to respond to your bullshit then it will be here.

@jagwired, If my comments have helped you understand this issue a little better, or steeled your resolve to stop consuming animal products, then it’s worth any hurt carnivore feelings I’ve caused along the way. These are uncomfortable truths, and anyone who can consider the reality of animal exploitation without shuddering is a scary person indeed.

Yes, your comments do help. Luckily my wife was looking over my shoulder and she critiqued a somewhat different response I had for your post @73. Not much different, but it mentioned that it may have been inappropriate for you to have brought up animal cruelty in this particular post. She, in her wisdom, helped me realize that what you said was actually relevant to how we treat other animals and I was responding in a knee-jerk fashion like what we’re seeing above. She’s the one that got me to go vegetarian and now we’re both trying to go vegan. Keep up the good work! You are making a difference.

Thanks, it really helps me to know that I’m not just howling into the wilderness for nothing. I know food habits can be hard to break and no one makes the switch overnight (and of course it’s basically impossible to be a “perfect” vegan in our present society,) but I promise once you get there it doesn’t take that long before you stop missing dairy. Obviously you can google things for yourself, but if you want my recipe for Macaroni & Daiya or something you can gmail me with this name. Best of luck to you both!

Could consciousness be the phenomenon caused by networks of matter that share information electrically? The nature and complexity of that network would determine the nature and complexity of the conscious phenomenon. This may imply that the ingredients for consciousness lay dormant in the universe until evolution brings the right properties together in order to build the hierarchy upon which levels of awareness emerge. To the list of fundamental quantities like mass, charge and spin, qualia or subjectivity (as a non-quantifiable property of energy/matter) should be added since consciousness is a fundamental phenomenon in the absence of which life would not be possible.

“The electric charge of an electron doesn’t arise out of more elemental properties. It simply has a charge. Likewise, I argue that we live in a universe of space, time, mass, energy, and consciousness arising out of complex systems.”

ANRI: Can they move from one level to another (such as, for example, an infant becoming an adult or a progressively damaged brain resulting in a coma)?

SENTIENT: I fail to comprehend the meaning of that sentence.

If consciousness is irreductible, it can’t develop, nor can it degrade. If a non-sentient lump of cells can gradually acquire consciousness (such as a blastocyst becoming, say, Steven Hawking), then consciousness cannot be irreductible. If it can be gradually lost (such as someone with a degenerative brain disorder), it can’t be irreductible.

According to Sentient – excuse me, SENTIENT – everything has consciousness except when you put stuff together in a laboratory, which doesn’t. Because reasons.

From an ordinary perspective, the only valid objection to non-vegetarianism is the cruelty it involves.

From a yogic point of view, non-vegetarian foods poison the cells and imbalance the mind-matter matrix.

I must point out that vegetarianism also involves collateral killing – pesticides, insecticides and other chemicals added to soil kill several lower life forms like worms, insects, rodents, microbes, etc, in order to protect the trees or produce.

So, in this way, vegetarianism is not “karma-free” food.

However, killing for food, in self-defense, as a peremptory strike, on account of capital punishment and due to natural calamities are universal facts of existence.

I am a strict lacto-vegetarian because of yoga.

The yogic experiences – opening up of my consciousness to the higher ranges of consciousness and/or the descent of the higher ranges of consciousness into my body – over the past few years have sensitized my nervous system to such an extent that non-vegetarian foods create illnesses in me.

A few days ago, I accidentally ate a small bit of cake containing eggs and the adverse reactions – shivering of nerves, hard breathing, erratic palpitation of the heart, headache – were spontaneous and it took at least 5 hours for these negative symptoms to subside.

Yoga that involves the opening up of the higher frequencies of consciousness in the seeker’s energy field is compatible with vegetarianism though it is said that at an advanced stage of yoga the yogi’s energy/consciousness become so heightened/potent that even ingested poison is digested without any ill-effects. Yes, at the personal level I can say that there exist several mental/physical/nonlocal manifestations of the yogic experiences (via personal contact with the higher frequencies of energy/consciousness) that can be termed “above normal”.

According to Sentient – excuse me, SENTIENT – everything has consciousness except when you put stuff together in a laboratory, which doesn’t. Because reasons.

SENTIENT: Consciousness is a phenomenon of energy/matter.

I guess the principle of conservation is operational in the case of consciousness as well.

So, the sum total of the potentiality of consciousness that energy/matter of an isolated, closed or open system can manifest remains unaltered though, once consciousness puts in an appearance, there exists a scale of sentience depending on the frequency of vibration, degree of organization, interaction of the parts of the system, entanglement and so on.

In the lab, the degree of consciousness manifested in a test tube of basic chemicals lacks the requisite degree of organization as well as the correct frequency of vibration needed for consciousness to emerge and so nothing turns into sentience or into a life form in any of these misguided lab experiments.

Daz: “What is the correct frequency of vibration? And what, exactly, is vibrating?”

SENTIENT: No idea what the correct frequency of vibration of energy/matter and their constituent aspects should be to manifest sentience in a visible way. It’s something very fundamental. I however know that energy/mater is a mass of vibrations/oscillations from practical experience. In yoga we come across fields of energy/matter that appear as vibrating systems that can be perceived and merged with and manipulated.

SENTIENT: I guess the principle of conservation is operational in the case of consciousness as well.

NICK: Oh, do you? But why should anyone be any more interested in your guess than in a guess that that principle operates in the case of plutonium, motorcycles or embarrassment?

SENTIENT: Embarrassment? Oh that is an effect of emotion at work in a sentient being. Didn’t you know this? LMAO. Emotion is a functional mode of sentience. Sentience is a phenomenon of energy/matter organization/interaction. Conservation applies to the fundamentals – energy, matter, mass, charge, sentience etc. The sum total of these fundamental quantities does not change though their manifested effects can be scaled or manifold. Understand, now?

DICK oops I meant NICK: Why should we take any note of that particular “point of view”, any more than, say, that of Satanism, Scientology, or belief in Santa Claus?

SENTIENT: To be holistic, everything, including subjective yogic experiences with visible manifestations in the body and on the surroundings, should be taken into account if the whole picture is to be understood. Subjectivity cannot be studied by inferential methods and so why should I accept limited and distorted scientific information on subjective experience when the scientists investigating subjective experience are no more sentient than I am? Each individual is unique in terms of his genetic makeup, personality traits, brain wiring, lifestyle and personal experiences and so there exist billions of subjects and tens of billions of subjective experiences with a few general patterns that runs through the entire gamut of subjectivity.

No idea what the correct frequency of vibration of energy/matter and their constituent aspects should be to manifest sentience in a visible way.

If you don’t know/haven’t tested what the correct frequency is, how do you know there is a correct frequency?

It’s something very fundamental.

Ah, that explains everything… not.

I however know that energy/mater is a mass of vibrations/oscillations from practical experience. In yoga we come across fields of energy/matter that appear as vibrating systems that can be perceived and merged with and manipulated.

How do you perceive these vibrations?
What do you mean by “merged with”?

SENTIENT: It is said that at an advanced stage of yoga the yogi’s energy/consciousness become so heightened/potent that even ingested poison is digested without any ill-effects

NICK: Yes, well a great deal of drivel is said. Where are the controlled experiments to validate this extraordinary claim?

SENTIENT: It is possible….no need for cheap sensationalism of such yogic experiences and those who have the power to digest poison or whatever usually will never subject themselves to ill-informed scientific tests. A few of the great yogis of the recent past like Sri Aurobindo and his collaborator the Mother and Swami Vivekananda were explicit about their yogic experiences and were not recluses. Thousands of educated people, including many scientists, were their admirers and witnessed/experienced many paranormal phenomena. Some years ago, the Times of India had run an article about an old yogi whose claims of abstaining from food, drink, excretion, medication and sleep were verified by a team of doctors at, I think, the Sterling Hospital in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Emotion is a functional mode of sentience. Sentience is a phenomenon of energy/matter organization/interaction. Conservation applies to the fundamentals – energy, matter, mass, charge, sentience etc. The sum total of these fundamental quantities does not change though their manifested effects can be scaled or manifold. Understand, now?

SENTIENT: The whole of existence is vibrating at different frequencies. The phenomenon of sentience emerges at a very subtle level of existence and my consciousness nor any scientific investigative technique has reached that fundamental level and so I wouldn’t know. But, since sentience is an emergent property in energy/matter thus logically speaking, and basing one’s logic on observable/experiential phenomena, thus it’s certain that at a deep level of interaction and organization of energy/matter sentience shows up in a system.

SENTIENT: Nothing in existence is cut-off from the rest of the universe. A thing is a specific formation of energy/matter in a particular surrounding but open/closed systems are perpetually in greater or smaller ways exchanging energy, matter and information with their surroundings. Lines of force connect everything. Consciousness that emerges in a sentient system in not just localized in the system but spreads out and unites with the energy/matter of its environment. A person living in the ordinary consciousness cannot perceive this universal play of the energies since the degree of vibration of his consciousness is not subtle enough to perceive the interactions and besides there’s too much sensual attractions and mental noise and environmental disturbances that distract him from being even partially aware of this interconnectedness. Conversely, a person like say a yogi whose consciousness vibrates at a higher frequency acquires microscopic and telescopic vision within the range of the activated frequencies of vibration of his consciousness-energy system. To “merge” means to break the energy/consciousness barrier that seemingly separates the subject from the object which can be done when the individual’s energy field with its sentient properties vibrates at a frequency that exceeds the normal frequencies of vibration of the body’s bio-electric field. Once the energy/consciousness barrier between the subject and the object is dissolved or weakened then one’s energy and its attendant consciousness establishes a causal connection with that of the object and in this omnijective state one identifies with the nature of the object and knows much about its noumenal and phenomenal nature that could other wise not be known by mathematical models, inference and logic.

It is possible….no need for cheap sensationalism of such yogic experiences and those who have the power to digest poison or whatever usually will never subject themselves to ill-informed scientific tests.

By “ill-informed scientific tests” you mean, of course, properly conducted tests that would expose them as frauds and liars.

Some years ago, the Times of India had run an article about an old yogi whose claims of abstaining from food, drink, excretion, medication and sleep were verified by a team of doctors at, I think, the Sterling Hospital in the Indian state of Gujarat.

While the test was running, I exposed some of those loopholes in a live programme on India TV: an official video clip revealed that Jani would sometimes move out of the CCTV camera’s field of view; he was allowed to receive devotees and could even leave the sealed test room for a sun bath; his regular gargling and bathing activities were not sufficiently monitored and so on. I demanded an opportunity to check the test set-up with an independent team of rationalist experts. There was no immediate reaction from Ahmadabad. But a sudden call from Sterling hospital invited me – live on TV – to join the test the next day itself.

Early morning, ready to fly to Gujarat, we were informed that we had to wait for the permission of the “top boss” of the project. Needless to say: this permission never came.

Similarly, we were unable to attend Shah’s first Jani test in November 2003 (that was financed by Dipas too). Shah has a long record of conducting these studies, which up till now have never been discussed in any scientific journal. They merely try to prove his strange sunshine theory: that humans can stop eating and drinking and switch to “other energy sources, sunlight being one”. Prahlad Jani is not Shah’s first poster child. In 2000/2001, he tested one Hira Manek for more than a year and confirmed his claim that he was feeding on sunshine only (and sometimes a little water). The idea that Shah’s research was investigated by Nasa and the University of Pennsylvania was officially denied by both the misrepresented parties.

Shah is a deeply religious Jain. As the president of the Indian Jain Doctors’ Federation (JDF), he proposes that via research, the still imperfect science of medicine is to be brought in line with the Jainist ‘”super-science” as revealed by the omniscient Lord Mahavir. We can only wonder whether his researcher eyes are sometimes clouded by religious zeal.

I’ve not read Sanal Edamaruku rebuttal. All I know is that a team of skilled doctors verified that yogi’s condition. Sanal Edamaruku is known to fabricate evidence or to distort facts on many occasions. on the other hand, most claims of supernatural capacities are fake. Besides, vested media interests distort the truth in many cases. Well, whatever, be the case, to survive without fulfilling one’s bodily needs is possible. I know it from personal experience. The logic is that if one needs to draw in energy through food and drink and recuperate through rest, then one can directly draw in energy from nature provided one can forge a direct causal link with nature. It’s possible. I have overcome the need to sleep and have exceeded the sex urge due to the yogic condition. I have not slept in years and am fresh, energetic and healthy. My claims can be verified anytime by anyone. I will personally contact the doctors and the concerned yogi in the near future and check things out for myself.

SENTIENT: It is possible….no need for cheap sensationalism of such yogic experiences and those who have the power to digest poison or whatever usually will never subject themselves to ill-informed scientific tests.

NICK: By “ill-informed scientific tests” you mean, of course, properly conducted tests that would expose them as frauds and liars.

SENTIENT: Now, if a great yogi like say Sri Aurobindo or Swami Vivekananda can perform a paranormal feat in full public view and in the presence of scientists, what will it achieve? nothing.

The public demonstration will simply indicate that the yogi can perform certain paranormal feats like say mind reading, levitation, healing, killing a person with a glance, neutralizing ingested poison and so on.

There will awe and/or questions in the minds of the people witnessing the demonstration.

Will the audience or the scientists present understand the process at work or be capable of replicating the same? No, not at all.

A massive public uproar and rampant media publicity and shallow scientific discussions of the paranormal is the last thing that a true yogi wants.

CHIGAU: I bet sentient hasn’t taken a dump in many years, either.
—-
“…exceeded the sex urge…”????

SENTIENT: LOL.

I eat, drink water and rest (for 15 minutes every day fully conscious but I never sleep).

Sex urge?

I guess vulgar thoughts of sex and of greed keep you occupied most of the time which shows that you’re still an unregenerate animal living in the most ordinary consciousness. LOL.

Oh that has been overcome due to the repeated descents of the higher states of energy/consciousness into my system….what happens is that the repeated infusion of the higher states into the body widens the nerves (initially it is painful) and alters set nervous patterns and neutralizes habitual thought waves and besides it cleans up the subconscient of its store of sensual patterns which cumulatively result in a deep mental stillness accompanied by a profound peace that pervades the entire body that begins radiating a light and at the same time the higher state of energy/consciousness enters the spine and travels all the way to the base of spine from where it enters the groin region and this is accompanied by intense heat waves vibrating at a higher frequency which causes the organ to become as light as a feather and the semen within the testicular region dries up and the released energy is drawn up the spinal nerves into the brain. This, in brief, is how the sex urge is overcome. Similarly, numerous organic defects ad personality flaws can be rectified in the same manner with minor modifications in the process….

Too much of public attention and superficial pseudointellectual investigations that’re the forte of most scientists would disrupt the continuity/persistence of the yogic consciousness and its concomitant trance or stasis state.

what happens is that the repeated infusion of the higher states into the body widens the nerves (initially it is painful) and alters set nervous patterns and neutralizes habitual thought waves and besides it cleans up the subconscient of its store of sensual patterns which cumulatively result in a deep mental stillness accompanied by a profound peace that pervades the entire body that begins radiating a light and at the same time the higher state of energy/consciousness enters the spine and travels all the way to the base of spine from where it enters the groin region and this is accompanied by intense heat waves vibrating at a higher frequency which causes the organ to become as light as a feather and the semen within the testicular region dries up and the released energy is drawn up the spinal nerves into the brain.

superficial pseudointellectual investigations that’re the forte of most scientists

DAZ: ever mind. A nice cup of cocoa and a Dan Brown novel, you’ll be out like a light.

SENTIENT: Sleep is foreign to my consciousness ever since the yogic experiences concerning the dynamic descent of the higher states of being commenced a few years ago. My consciousness and energy are vibrating at too high a frequency even in this elementary stage of the yoga to be overcome by listlessness or tiredness which causes the surface consciousness to retreat into the subliminal depths which in common parlance is called sleep or with most people the retreating surface consciousness during sleep enters a subconscious state where our instincts, fears, carnal desires and habits are rooted and this why most people have fitful or disturbed sleep and wake up more stressed out than refreshed

The urge to sleep is merely human, the phenomenon of overcoming sleep is yogic.

The gravitational potential due to a mass distribution is V = A/(x^2 + a^2)^1/2.

Show that the gravitational “field” is given by Ax/(x^2 + a^2)^3/2 in the x-direction.

(smiles in advance)

…and… what does that have to do with anything you’ve posted before?

Are you perhaps trying to claim that life and consciousness are vibrations of the gravity field? Because that would be ridiculous.

Could consciousness be the phenomenon caused by networks of matter that share information electrically? The nature and complexity of that network would determine the nature and complexity of the conscious phenomenon. This may imply that the ingredients for consciousness lay dormant in the universe until evolution brings the right properties together in order to build the hierarchy upon which levels of awareness emerge.

That’s very close to what I’m saying.

To the list of fundamental quantities like mass, charge and spin, qualia or subjectivity (as a non-quantifiable property of energy/matter) should be added since consciousness is a fundamental phenomenon in the absence of which life would not be possible.

From a yogic point of view, non-vegetarian foods poison the cells and imbalance the mind-matter matrix.

Trouble is, the yogic point of view is made up. Sure, if you eat too much protein, you’ll get gout; if you can’t digest lactose, it’ll give you really bad diarrhea; and so on – but “poison the cells” is nonsense.

Explain what the mind-matter matrix is, and what makes you think it exists.

lower life forms

That’s a misleading and meaningless term.

I find it particularly funny that you mention rodents in your list of lower life forms. Did you know how closely related rodents and primates are?

However, killing for food, in self-defense, as a peremptory strike, on account of capital punishment and due to natural calamities are universal facts of existence.

All countries around here abolished the death penalty several decades ago, some 50 years ago or longer, and there is no movement to recommence killing people to show them that killing is wrong.

Universal fact of existence? Are you mad?

A few days ago, I accidentally ate a small bit of cake containing eggs and the adverse reactions – shivering of nerves, hard breathing, erratic palpitation of the heart, headache – were spontaneous and it took at least 5 hours for these negative symptoms to subside.

When did you find out that there was egg in the cake?

I however know that energy/mater is a mass of vibrations/oscillations from practical experience.

Oh, do you.

How can we evaluate this claim of yours? How is it different from Russell’s teapot and the dragon in Sagan’s garage?

So, an organism devoid of sentience can come into existence? LOL.

Define “sentience” and “organism”.

Seriously, you keep throwing the word “sentience” around and pretend everybody knows exactly what you mean! It’s not obvious what you mean. You need to explain it.

Much like the myth of creating “life” in a test tube from raw chemicals, right? LOL.

You laugh because you’ve been sleeping for the last few years: you have no idea that it’s half been done.

“On May 21, 2010, Science reported that the Venter group had successfully synthesized the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides from a computer record, and transplanted the synthesized genome into the existing cell of a Mycoplasma capricolum bacterium that had had its DNA removed. The “synthetic” bacterium was viable, i.e. capable of replicating billions of times.”

Subjectivity cannot be studied by inferential methods and so why should I accept limited and distorted scientific information on subjective experience when the scientists investigating subjective experience are no more sentient than I am?

Because it’s important not to fool oneself – and oneself is always the easiest person to fool.

and those who have the power to digest poison or whatever usually will never subject themselves to ill-informed scientific tests.

So they’re all fraudsters, then.

What do they have to hide? What are they afraid of?

Thousands of educated people, including many scientists, were their admirers and witnessed/experienced many paranormal phenomena.

Some years ago, the Times of India had run an article about an old yogi whose claims of abstaining from food, drink, excretion, medication and sleep were verified by a team of doctors at, I think, the Sterling Hospital in the Indian state of Gujarat.

SENTIENT: Since, every emergent phenomenon manifests at a particular degree of vibration…

I’m sorry, you keep making shit up. There’s no other way to put it. :-|

I believe if an instrument working within the range of the bio-electric frequencies can be engineered many organic and functional defects or disorders in a living organism can be rectified.

Then what are you waiting for?

Test your belief, and ours! Build that instrument! Help billions of suffering people!

Are you afraid you might be wrong?

a very subtle level of existence

What, if anything, does that mean?

but open/closed systems are perpetually in greater or smaller ways exchanging energy, matter and information with their surroundings.

Uh.

By definition, closed systems are not exchanging matter with their surroundings. That’s what “closed system” means. If a system exchanges matter with its surroundings, it’s by definition open and not closed.

Are you trying to impress us with your knowledge of technical terms? It’s backfiring.

The gravitational potential due to a mass distribution is V = A/(x^2 + a^2)^1/2.

Show that the gravitational “field” is given by Ax/(x^2 + a^2)^3/2 in the x-direction.

(smiles in advance)

…and… what does that have to do with anything you’ve posted before?

Are you perhaps trying to claim that life and consciousness are vibrations of the gravity field? Because that would be ridiculous.

Could consciousness be the phenomenon caused by networks of matter that share information electrically? The nature and complexity of that network would determine the nature and complexity of the conscious phenomenon. This may imply that the ingredients for consciousness lay dormant in the universe until evolution brings the right properties together in order to build the hierarchy upon which levels of awareness emerge.

That’s very close to what I’m saying.

To the list of fundamental quantities like mass, charge and spin, qualia or subjectivity (as a non-quantifiable property of energy/matter) should be added since consciousness is a fundamental phenomenon in the absence of which life would not be possible.

From a yogic point of view, non-vegetarian foods poison the cells and imbalance the mind-matter matrix.

Trouble is, the yogic point of view is made up. Sure, if you eat too much protein, you’ll get gout; if you can’t digest lactose, it’ll give you really bad diarrhea; and so on – but “poison the cells” is nonsense.

Explain what the mind-matter matrix is, and what makes you think it exists.

lower life forms

That’s a misleading and meaningless term.

I find it particularly funny that you mention rodents in your list of lower life forms. Did you know how closely related rodents and primates are?

However, killing for food, in self-defense, as a peremptory strike, on account of capital punishment and due to natural calamities are universal facts of existence.

All countries around here abolished the death penalty several decades ago, some 50 years ago or longer, and there is no movement to recommence killing people to show them that killing is wrong.

Universal fact of existence? Are you mad?

A few days ago, I accidentally ate a small bit of cake containing eggs and the adverse reactions – shivering of nerves, hard breathing, erratic palpitation of the heart, headache – were spontaneous and it took at least 5 hours for these negative symptoms to subside.

When did you find out that there was egg in the cake?

I however know that energy/mater is a mass of vibrations/oscillations from practical experience.

Oh, do you.

How can we evaluate this claim of yours? How is it different from Russell’s teapot and the dragon in Sagan’s garage?

So, an organism devoid of sentience can come into existence? LOL.

Define “sentience” and “organism”.

Seriously, you keep throwing the word “sentience” around and pretend everybody knows exactly what you mean! It’s not obvious what you mean. You need to explain it.

Much like the myth of creating “life” in a test tube from raw chemicals, right? LOL.

You laugh because you’ve been sleeping for the last few years: you have no idea that it’s half been done.

“On May 21, 2010, Science reported that the Venter group had successfully synthesized the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides from a computer record, and transplanted the synthesized genome into the existing cell of a Mycoplasma capricolum bacterium that had had its DNA removed. The “synthetic” bacterium was viable, i.e. capable of replicating billions of times.”

Sanal Edamaruku is known to fabricate evidence or to distort facts on many occasions.

Another claim made without evidence.

I have not slept in years

And another. Quite a habit of yours.

I will personally contact the doctors and the concerned yogi in the near future and check things out for myself.

But you’re a credulous numpty, as you’ve shown repeatedly. Why would anyone take your opinion seriously?

My claims can be verified anytime by anyone.

Liar. How can anyone verify the claim of a pseudonymous blog commenter not to have slept in years?

@120

Now, if a great yogi like say Sri Aurobindo or Swami Vivekananda can perform a paranormal feat in full public view and in the presence of scientists, what will it achieve? nothing.

Well clearly, it would show the shallow materialism of science up for what it is. It would convince millions of people to study yoga. The reason it is not done is because, if these “great yogis” claim to perform such feats, they are lying frauds.

@124

No, it is the truth.

No, it is a load of crap. Fraudulent “psychics” make exactly the same kind of claim. Why would anyone believe what you say, when you produce zero evidence for it? Even more so when you come out with the sort of word salad we see from you in several comments.

Now how about you actually come out with some actual evidence of your claims?

Subjectivity cannot be studied by inferential methods and so why should I accept limited and distorted scientific information on subjective experience when the scientists investigating subjective experience are no more sentient than I am?

Because it’s important not to fool oneself – and oneself is always the easiest person to fool.

and those who have the power to digest poison or whatever usually will never subject themselves to ill-informed scientific tests.

So they’re all fraudsters, then.

What do they have to hide? What are they afraid of?

Thousands of educated people, including many scientists, were their admirers and witnessed/experienced many paranormal phenomena.

Some years ago, the Times of India had run an article about an old yogi whose claims of abstaining from food, drink, excretion, medication and sleep were verified by a team of doctors at, I think, the Sterling Hospital in the Indian state of Gujarat.

SENTIENT: Since, every emergent phenomenon manifests at a particular degree of vibration…

I’m sorry, you keep making shit up. There’s no other way to put it. :-|

I believe if an instrument working within the range of the bio-electric frequencies can be engineered many organic and functional defects or disorders in a living organism can be rectified.

Then what are you waiting for?

Test your belief, and ours! Build that instrument! Help billions of suffering people!

Are you afraid you might be wrong?

a very subtle level of existence

What, if anything, does that mean?

but open/closed systems are perpetually in greater or smaller ways exchanging energy, matter and information with their surroundings.

Uh.

By definition, closed systems are not exchanging matter with their surroundings. That’s what “closed system” means. If a system exchanges matter with its surroundings, it’s by definition open and not closed.

Are you trying to impress us with your knowledge of technical terms? It’s backfiring.

I have not slept in years

I bet you fall asleep every time you meditate.

killing a person with a glance

Om lingalingalingalingalinga, kilikilikilikili…

Will the audience or the scientists present understand the process at work or be capable of replicating the same? No, not at all.

Who cares? They would see that something is happening which requires explanation. They couldn’t pretend there’s nothing going on.

Sex urge?

I guess vulgar thoughts of sex and of greed keep you occupied most of the time which shows that you’re still an unregenerate animal living in the most ordinary consciousness. LOL.

Oh, dude. You just have no idea. :-) Not all people have an equally strong sex urge. About a percent of all adult people, through no effort of their own, have no sex urge at all!

which cumulatively result in a deep mental stillness accompanied by a profound peace that pervades the entire body

Sleep.

and the semen within the testicular region dries up and the released energy is drawn up the spinal nerves into the brain.

Drying stuff up consumes energy. What you try to imagine when you meditate doesn’t necessarily have any relationship to reality, you know?

This is why the handful of genuine yogis that exist avoid publicity.

…I thought you claimed Aurobindo was a genuine yogi? Did I misunderstand that?

NICK: Liar. How can anyone verify the claim of a pseudonymous blog commenter not to have slept in years?

SENTIENT: Liar? What do you know about yogic states or about the actual nature of reality by union in consciousness of the subject with the object? You’re ignorant and lack the innate capacity for yoga.

I used to exchange notes with X who lived in a different time zone a year ago via email. He soon observed that I would keep posting him at odd hours and would stay up all night posting him and often he’d notice that I kept posting him during the day too. Others in my city have tested my claim by calling me in the dead of the night and would be surprised that I would answer the call on the first or second ring and that my voice sounded as fresh and alert as ever.

DAVID: Drying stuff up consumes energy. What you try to imagine when you meditate doesn’t necessarily have any relationship to reality, you know?

SENTIENT: Yes, but not much energy is needed to dry up 3 to 4 ml of semen and besides the energy loss is compensated by the energy released from the dessicated semen. The dynamic descent of the higher states of energy/consciousness is an awesome and a rare yogic experience but is fraught with danger and one can get paralyzed, blinded or die if one is not careful…

Yeah, it’s weird how they claim to have transcended human behaviors, but seem to love arguing with commenters on a blog. You’d think if they were so yogic, they’d be…off transcending somewhere. You know, they really don’t do anything useful, do they?

I used to exchange notes with X who lived in a different time zone a year ago via email. He soon observed that I would keep posting him at odd hours and would stay up all night posting him and often he’d notice that I kept posting him during the day too. Others in my city have tested my claim by calling me in the dead of the night and would be surprised that I would answer the call on the first or second ring and that my voice sounded as fresh and alert as ever.

Have you no idea how pathetic this is?

My grandpa, through no effort of his own, was able to fall asleep at any time and then wake up fresh and rested at any time.

Or perhaps you’ve reverted to a baby’s sleep cycle: 4 hours of sleep, 4 hours of wakeness. That’s what some people do in a sleep lab, again through no effort of their own.

Yes, but not much energy is needed to dry up 3 to 4 ml of semen and besides the energy loss is compensated by the energy released from the dessicated semen. The dynamic descent of the higher states of energy/consciousness is an awesome and a rare yogic experience but is fraught with danger and one can get paralyzed, blinded or die if one is not careful…

Heh…

I think I’ll just stick to wanking. Sounds about as fun and a lot less dangerous.

If I’m understanding this correctly, after a few years or so one’s testicles would be stuffed full of desiccated semen.
I have two thoughts.
One: Kleenex sounds easier
Two: You’d hardly dare take a bath, would you?

Yes, Sri Aurobindo was one of those rare yogis – genuine, profound and powerful.

Then why have I seen his name so often? I don’t seek such information out, you know.

If he wasn’t seeking publicity, how is this possible? Was he not even capable to make his followers, first of all “The Mother”, understand that he didn’t want publicity? Why did he write books with his name on it and even a whole magazine instead of, say, using a pseudonym or publishing entirely anonymously? How was “The Mother” able to get away with founding Auroville?!?

His followers were no more reclusive about themselves. The name of Sri Chinmoy is plastered on street signs here.

SENTIENT: No, I have rarely meditated and since the past 3 years not even once. The yogic consciousness is permanent in me in the form of a heavy vibrating force over the head and in the head region and often under a little deep aspiration on my part this higher consciousness-force descends with powerful pulsations further into my body entering the face, chest and spine regions accompanied with its attendant signs of heat, light, opening up of the nerves, opening up of the sense faculties, vision, etc, and there is a constant circulation of the force through my thumb and index finger of the right hand and a crawling movement of the currents of energy in the nape of my neck leading to the brain. How I came into direct contact with this higher force is another story and if I narrate it here it will not be understood and will baffle the rationalists/medical doctors. In most ways, the dynamic descent of the higher state of energy/consciousness into my body is a gift from Sri Aurobindo…..

I stated in a previous post that Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Vivekananda and yes Ramanna were the few great yogis who did not hide in forests, caves or mountain tops. Most of the genuine yogis however prefer to remain away from the public glare.

Auroville is a distraction and a den of free sex, nudity, hip behavior, child abuse and pseudo-intellectual nonsense. None of the inmates have the capacity or the sincerity needed to enter the Integral Yoga. The last great disciples of Aurobindo and the Mother were Satprem (a French disciple who adopted an Indian name) and his yogic partner, Sujatha Nahar. They passed away in 2010 or so in Paris. They were yogic persons.

The yogic consciousness is permanent in me in the form of a heavy vibrating force over the head and in the head region

That sounds remarkably similar to the headache I get when I’m very tired. I’m not joking, I’m not being sarcastic this time.

But back to your claim that you haven’t slept in years. Why don’t you simply install cameras in your apartment and, after a week or two, show the world that it’s possible to abandon sleep?

And another thing: if you’ve stopped meditating, why hasn’t your sex urge come back, assuming you ever had any? Or is sheer force of will, like that of a Christian monk or nun, enough to deal with it? And why would you want to dry up your semen? The sex urge isn’t caused by semen pressure or any such thing. Semen is constantly recycled. It doesn’t become more over time, no matter if you ever ejaculate.

I have not slept in years and am fresh, energetic and healthy. My claims can be verified anytime by anyone.

But clearly, your claim not to have slept for years cannot be verified at any time by anyone, and in particular, cannot be verified by anyone you are arguing with here, since we don’t even know who you are, let alone have the opportunity to subject you to the appropriate procedures to determine whether you sleep. So you’re a liar.

If this lack of sleeping could be easily verified at any time, why hasn’t it been already?

Seriously, step up and do the world a favor already. The virtues of your yoga can be shown to be real, and shared with the world. Sleep can be eliminated, saving us all so much time, and freeing up rooms in our houses. Maybe even show sleep scientists how to help people like me to sleep better.

Show the world that you don’t sleep, and if you condescend to come back here, I will solemnly agree with everything you say, and help you to enlighten these gormless heathens.

Ain’t gonna happen. Even granting the implausible idea that it’s really true, sentient has already declared that the yogis don’t want to share it with the world*. Would ruin the magic, or something. Or would make them feel too common.

One-third of my time is spent sleeping. One-third of my house is devoted to sleeping. I drive home every evening just because it is my place to sleep. The snuggly-naked time I get with my wife is spent in a coma. The building I rent for my business is empty two-thirds of the time because my employees sleep. My favorite restaurant closes at night. My doctor isn’t available, the intern is staggering around. The president of this country nods off when our enemies are up and doing.

But these yoga yo-yos can’t be arsed to even show us that sleep is indeed not needed?!?

So, the sum total of the potentiality of consciousness that energy/matter of an isolated, closed or open system can manifest remains unaltered though, once consciousness puts in an appearance, there exists a scale of sentience depending on the frequency of vibration, degree of organization, interaction of the parts of the system, entanglement and so on.

So, is a building such a system?
Howabout a neighborhood?
A city?
A country?

Is New York sentient?
Is Luxembourg?
If not, why not?
If so, what do they have to say?

The yogic consciousness is permanent in me in the form of a heavy vibrating force over the head and in the head region and often under a little deep aspiration on my part this higher consciousness-force descends with powerful pulsations further into my body entering the face, chest and spine regions accompanied with its attendant signs of heat, light, opening up of the nerves, opening up of the sense faculties, vision, etc, and there is a constant circulation of the force through my thumb and index finger of the right hand and a crawling movement of the currents of energy in the nape of my neck leading to the brain. How I came into direct contact with this higher force is another story and if I narrate it here it will not be understood and will baffle the rationalists/medical doctors.

I guess, in addition to eliminating the need for sleep or sex, the Integral Yoga also helps us transcend our base desire to use periods in our sentences.

I simply laugh out loud when I hear deluded and naive religious nuts asking atheists or nonbelievers to “disprove” the existence of God.

The onus is fully on the believers in God to provide evidence about this deity (God) since when we investigate nature and its embodied laws and natural phenomenon like life we find no evidence whatsoever to support any belief in a creator God.

Nature and its laws and its phenomena and its living forms are constituted exclusively of energy, matter and consciousness that gradually emerge from a state of singularity at various levels of interaction and of increasing complexity of the cosmic hierarchy.

The whole of cosmic existence with its innate operations is based completely on the triune of energy, matter and consciousness in varying degrees of manifestation and so everything in existence should be explained exclusively in terms of energy, matter and consciousness.

Whereas, belief in religion rests on irrational ideas uncorroborated by evidence which can be summarized as follows:

1) “spirit” that can neither be defined nor corroborated since there’s not the tiniest shred of evidence in support of it,

2) the state of nothing/void that can neither be defined nor supported by an atom of evidence,

3) extra-cosmic God having no causal link with anything in existence which is illogical and for which there’s no evidence, and

4) creation from nothing whose causal mechanism cannot be explained.

So, atheists, who take their realistic stand on tangible universals like energy, matter and consciousness to explain the whole of existence are justified in debunking the very idea of God and the rest of the religious mumbo that have nothing to do with the universal realities based on the workings of energy, matter and consciousness.

The day believers can produce evidence of spirit, the state of nothing, the mechanism of creation from nothing and of uncausal extra-cosmicism then only can atheists begin taking religious claims seriously but until then religion is just a laughing stock and believers a bunch of irrational jokers.

Since energy in an isolated system like our universe(s) can neither be created nor destroyed (in keeping with the principle of conservation) but simply oscillates between subtle (QM vacuum) state and manifest state (multidimensional universe) with each phase lasting billions of years for all eternity then where is the question of an extra-cosmic creator, having no causal link with anything, creating the universe from nothing?

If we assume the existence of an extra-cosmic creator God then we move into an infinite regress which is illogical and besides how do we logically explain the existence of energy/matter/consciousness having sprung into existence from “nothing”?

Nothing cannot be defined, cannot be imagined, cannot be tested and cannot be experienced and so does not exist.

Evidently, energy, matter and consciousness are the only entities that can be accounted for in the whole of existence when viewed, cogitated upon, experimented and experienced.

So, everything in existence, from the noumenon to the phenomena, should be expressed, quantized and experienced exclusively in terms of the triune of energy, matter and consciousness that form an integrated whole.

From the word go I was tempted to accuse sentient of peddling New-Age woo, but held back… then they go ahead and confirm it for me at #93.

I am a strict lacto-vegetarian because of yoga.

The yogic experiences – opening up of my consciousness to the higher ranges of consciousness and/or the descent of the higher ranges of consciousness into my body – over the past few years have sensitized my nervous system to such an extent that non-vegetarian foods create illnesses in me.

Bah.

@Sentient

Your basic premise appears to be that “like begets like”, and that therefore consciousness (which you seem to be treating as a “thing”, but we’ll leave that for the minute) arising from the combination of non-conscious matter and non-conscious energy is “paradoxical”.

2Na +Cl2 = 2NaCl

Sodium is nothing like chlorine, and neither is anything like salt. When the existence of table salt disproves the basic premise of your argument, it’s probably time to give up.

SENTIENT: I am a strict lacto-vegetarian because of yoga. The yogic experiences – opening up of my consciousness to the higher ranges of consciousness and/or the descent of the higher ranges of consciousness into my body – over the past few years have sensitized my nervous system to such an extent that non-vegetarian foods create illnesses in me.

Thumper: Token Breeder: Bah.

SENTIENT: What I’ve stated about my diet being lacto-veg is true and it’s also true that the yogic experiences have sensitized my nervous system to such an extent that non-veg foods make me ill. i recently ate a small bit of cake containing egg, as narrated above, and was ill for hours.

Given that you’re a known liar (“not slept for years,” my uncle’s boss’s horse’s arse), any credence I’m giving your egg story is… limited, shall we say. Just in case, though; you do realise there’s a very obvious explanation for that, right?

THUMPER: Your basic premise appears to be that “like begets like”, and that therefore consciousness (which you seem to be treating as a “thing”, but we’ll leave that for the minute) arising from the combination of non-conscious matter and non-conscious energy is “paradoxical”.

2Na +Cl2 = 2NaCl

Sodium is nothing like chlorine, and neither is anything like salt. When the existence of table salt disproves the basic premise of your argument, it’s probably time to give up.

SENTIENT: Like begets like at the level of sentient beings and at the level of many natural phenomena as well. A human being is quite different from his parents due to combining of genes and environmental factors also play a role in determining the gene expression. nevertheless, the offspring remains in the human species and this is what I meant by like begets like. At the level of certain natural phenomena like rainfall, water vapor which is the vapor form of H2O comes down as liquid water which is the liquid form of H2O. here, too, the intrinsic molecular formula remains intact.

As for the equation,

2Na +Cl2 = 2NaCl

What a silly analogy.

The chemical equation given above is an example of inorganic compound formation from 2 different elements.

It simply states, as per the stoichiometry, that 2 moles of Na atoms combine with 1 mole of Cl molecules via electrovalent or ionic bonding to produce 1 mole of NaCl molecules which display different properties than its constituents.

This happens at the elemental/molecular level but is not seen at the level of sentient species as for instance a camel crossing with a rat giving rise to a “camat”.

Now, have you though of this (stated below)?

At the lower levels of organization of energy/matter or in simple terms where insentient entities are concerned, the universal laws governing interactions among particles/forces is:

1) Unlike charges or unlike poles attract and

2) Like charge or like poles repel.

However, at higher levels of organization of energy/matter, when sentience, as a phenomenon of complex energy/matter structural/functional interactions, puts in an appearance the above laws are reversed at least where psychology is concerned – People of similar tastes, similar temperaments, similar aspirations usually group together – a case of “birds of a feather flock together”.

In the sexual department, the same gross material law of unlikes attracting which is a reference to heterosexual attraction holds true thereby indicating that heterosexuality is closer to the primal material law of unlikes having an affinity for each other.

The homosexual case of same gender sexual/romantic attraction violates this basic gross material law and bisexuality falls in between.

So, finally, the natural law of procreation among sentient organisms is this – like begets like.

DAZ: Given that you’re a known liar (“not slept for years,” my uncle’s boss’s horse’s arse), any credence I’m giving your egg story is… limited, shall we say. Just in case, though; you do realise there’s a very obvious explanation for that, right?

I don’t eat non-veg food but if taken accidentally it causes the above adverse symptoms in my body.

Even the smell of non-veg foods, tends, to a certain extent, to manifest the above negative symptoms in me.

The same adverse symptoms manifest in case of accidental consumption of alcohol or even its vapors or its smell manifests many of the above listed adverse symptoms in my body.

Also, the force fields of certain persons/animals/trees that’re in a state of imbalance harms my body and at times due to a kind of inductive effect my bio-energy drains out of my body leaving me weak and irritable – a kind of vampirism.

The descents of the higher consciousness-force into my body during yogic experiences have sensitized my nerves to a very great extent.

For a start, no, your “Yogic experiences” have not “sensitized [your] nervous system to such an extent that non-veg foods make [you] ill”. Your lacto-vegetarian diet has resulted in your digestive tract becoming sensitive to egg and meat proteins, because it is not accustomed to dealing with them.

Second, I’m aware what the equation signifys, thanks. I have a basic grounding in chemistry and fully understand the GCSE-level stuff which you outline. Why you think any of it negates my point is beyond me.

You’re moving the goal posts. You said like begets like. Now you’re saying that like only begets like when you’re talking about organic, “sentient” beings (what definition of “sentient” are you working to, btw? I wouldn’t define a rat or a camel as sentient), and it doesn’t apply to inorganic compounds (what about organic compounds?).

Then you equate electromagnetism with human social interactions. Having just accused me of a false equivaency. The irony is staggering.

Finally, this piece of stupid:

In the sexual department, the same gross material law of unlikes attracting which is a reference to heterosexual attraction holds true thereby indicating that heterosexuality is closer to the primal material law of unlikes having an affinity for each other.

The homosexual case of same gender sexual/romantic attraction violates this basic gross material law and bisexuality falls in between.

So, finally, the natural law of procreation among sentient organisms is this – like begets like.

Now you’re equating human sexual behaviour with electromagnetism. As you rightly point out amongst the waffle, in sexual procreation you require opposite sexes to produce a child. And that homosexual sex (i.e. sex between “likes”) does not beget children. Another example that like does not, in fact, beget like.

Sir, I am forced to conclude that you have literally no idea what you are talking about.

To be fair, I’m not sure if sentient is actually disparaging same-sex attraction or just pointing to it as an exception to the “rule.” But then, that’s mostly because sentient and I do share one thing in common—neither of us knows what the fuck sentient is talking about.

The psychological example where the law of attraction of unlikes attracting at the EM level is reversed at the psychological level where in most instances we observe that birds of a feather flock together meaning that people of similar temperaments, similar tastes, similar habits, similar aspirations usually tend to group together.

I suppose you mean you accept that it happens – it doesn’t require your support any more than gravity does. But it does not conform to your dictum that “like begets like”, because we are all descended from non-humans.

and have nothing to say against homosexuals

Well, maybe I’m reading too much into your ridiculous blather:

The homosexual case of same gender sexual/romantic attraction violates this basic gross material law

Also, the force fields of certain persons/animals/trees that’re in a state of imbalance harms my body and at times due to a kind of inductive effect my bio-energy drains out of my body leaving me weak and irritable – a kind of vampirism.

Why is it that despite our best efforts we’re unable to produce a semblance of sentience in raw chemicals nor are we capable of creating a living organism even if provided with all the necessary molecular chains needed to engineer it? Why is it not possible to execute a thought transplant?

Many people are under the naive impression that devoid of religious teachings humans would become morally degraded. Religion is not required to convey morals to humankind. On the contrary, the morals preached by religions are questionable and belong to bronze age reasoning that were more colored by primitive passions, tribal affiliations, vengeance, intolerance, unquestioning obedience or fear. Morality is an offshoot of evolutionary processes. Each degree of consciousness is ingrained with its own morality or ethics. The more conscious a species or an individual is, the better the morals. The law of the jungle of “might is right” is an innate aspect of unregenerate instincts, most of the morals of Semitic faiths are based on crude emotionality, Buddhist compassion is more a product of a refined mentality.

LEDASMOM: “Well, if Integral Yoga (IY) allows one to eliminate ejaculations, I imagine it could also be used to eliminate periods.”

SENTIENT: Could be so since the IY is based on transforming the mental species (humankind) into a supramental one – the next evolutionary thrust, as it is called.

The supposed supramental being, as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo, would have awakened gnostic faculties, be physically immortal, be physically invincible and whose internal organ systems, once the supramental consciousness-force would fully settle in the being, would gradually atrophy and be replaced by 16 activated force centers (chakras) along the spine leading to the pineal gland that would be capable of directly communing with nature forces as well with the elevated degrees of consciousness up to the supramental plane.

Sentient: I want you to stop right now, get into a yoga position, and meditate on the possibility that you aren’t anywhere near as intelligent as you think you are. For at least a couple of days. Don’t come back until you’ve contemplated this subject more deeply.

P Z: “Sentient: I want you to stop right now, get into a yoga position, and meditate on the possibility that you aren’t anywhere near as intelligent as you think you are. For at least a couple of days. Don’t come back until you’ve contemplated this subject more deeply.”

SENTIENT: Are you intelligent, Dr Myers?

Or are you simply playing around with crude definitions, egoism, arrogance, bombastic words and living in the most ordinary consciousness, as I see it.

I see in you a mighty inferiority complex and a crude intellect at work.

Sorry, for being so blunt.

If my views have touched a raw nerve or have upset your feeble intellectual capacities, I will not post here, Sir.

I thought Dr P Z Myers was a free thinker and willing to learn but I was wrong.

I am not to blame for detailing the yogic position on this thread.

I was fine discussing science, mind-matter, ethics et al but many of the posters here have been making rude remarks and repeatedly prodding me with questions on the yoga and so I answered them.

Now, with Dr Myers butting in with his unclassy remarks about intelligence – a subject that he’s not competent to talk about given his own low level of intelligence and total lack of understanding about how consciousness works in the context of mind-matter – well I have lost all respect for him.

Dr P Z owns this blog and so I have no say in the matter.

I take it that I am banned from posting, here, unless he permits my posts.

Thank you, for affording me the opportunity of posting here for the past few days.

If Dr P Z behaves in his typical dictatorial, unintelligent and uncultured way given his evident personality defects that seep through his vids on You Tube and blocks my posts (in one video Dr P Z said that his religious opponent should be slapped hard on the face and called him a moron in full public view. I was shocked and felt like puking on hearing his uncivilized words) then anyone wishing to contact me may do so at: joelezra651@gmail.com.

Whatever be your views, I will not shun you but will be willing to discuss the underlying logic and seek for evidence, if any.

I don’t have that crude mentality of banning people simply because I don’t agree with them.

Those opposed to freedom of thought lack intelligence and class and are as intolerant as our religious bigots.

I don’t have that crude mentality of banning people simply because I don’t agree with them

I suspect you wouldn’t be banned for merely disagreeing with PZ. I think you’d be banned because of your repetitive fuckwittery and inability (or lack of desire) to show evidence to support the silly woo you believe in.

Also, this is a blog frequented by people with a great deal of appreciation for science. You came in spouting gibberish and proceeded to make claim after claim with no supporting evidence. Your beliefs will not be accorded respect simply because you have them. I’ve read nothing by you in this thread that makes the slightest bit of sense and any mockery you’ve received (or will receive) is well deserved.

SENTIENT: What I’ve stated about my diet being lacto-veg is true and it’s also true that the yogic experiences have sensitized my nervous system to such an extent that non-veg foods make me ill. i recently ate a small bit of cake containing egg, as narrated above, and was ill for hours.

I asked you when you found out that there was egg in it.

You have never replied.

At the lower levels of organization of energy/matter or in simple terms where insentient entities are concerned, the universal laws governing interactions among particles/forces is:

1) Unlike charges or unlike poles attract and

2) Like charge or like poles repel.

This is true of electromagnetics.

It is not true of gravity, where like charges (mass) attract and unlike charges don’t even exist (to the best of anyone’s current knowledge).

The weak interaction doesn’t seem to involve any charges or forces, but I frankly don’t understand it.

Maxwell’s equations are not a metaphor as you seem to believe. You cannot generalize them beyond electromagnetics. Positively and negatively charged particles do not like each other, they literally attract each other with a literal force!

Even the smell of non-veg foods, tends, to a certain extent, to manifest the above negative symptoms in me.

The same adverse symptoms manifest in case of accidental consumption of alcohol or even its vapors or its smell manifests many of the above listed adverse symptoms in my body.

That’s quite obviously psychological: a panic reaction.

BTW, I agree that alcohol stinks.

Also, the force fields of certain persons/animals/trees that’re in a state of imbalance harms my body and at times due to a kind of inductive effect my bio-energy drains out of my body leaving me weak and irritable – a kind of vampirism.

Now, this claim is a testable hypothesis.

Do you perhaps simply suffer from depression* and blame it on external objects instead of recognizing it as a malfunction of your brain?

* Or, y’know, fatigue, from not sleeping enough.

At the level of procreation in sentient organisms, the universal law is – like begets like. Who has ever seen a snake begetting a lion or a tiger giving birth to a rat? LOL.

Define “like”, then. Think of dog breeding…

In terms of molecular reactions, what constitutes the will that humans seem to possess to an extent?

[…]

How do we explain intentionality in terms of molecular forces?

Whoa. That’s like trying to explain the climate in terms of molecular forces. It could be done, it would just be a ridiculous amount of work!

An intention is an interaction between parts of the brain; how those work can be explained in terms of electric currents in nerve networks; those can be explained in terms of electrochemical interactions along nerve cells and chemical interactions in synapses; and those can be explained in terms of molecular forces (which are electric).

Why is it that despite our best efforts we’re unable to produce a semblance of sentience in raw chemicals

Dude, we’ve only just begun trying to make a bacterium from raw chemicals, and we’re only half done with that (I posted the link above). Be a little bit more patient! :-)

And define “sentience” at last!!! You see, we don’t understand exactly what you mean; and as long as we don’t, we can’t even guess which examples you might accept!

Why is it not possible to execute a thought transplant?

Because a thought isn’t a thing. It’s an interaction.

The organ that does the thinking is the brain; and with a lot of effort, it is certainly possible to transplant a brain – except that the result wouldn’t be called a brain transplant, it would be called a whole-body transplant for reasons that should be obvious.

What I meant was that once a species is formed then we always observe the procreational law of like begets like; this law is never violated.

No. Species do not have defined beginnings or endings. Species are not magic.

For fuck’s sake, sentient. :-) I’m a biologist. There are easily 150 different species concepts out there. Each of them describes something different and calls it “species”; and when you apply them to the same organisms, you get different results – depending on the species concept, there are from 101 to 249 endemic bird species in Mexico, and the region with the greatest number of endemic species is in wholly different parts of the country!

Species are arbitrary subdivisions of the continuous tree of life.

Groups of people: DEFYING THE LAWS OF MAGNETISM!!!!1!!

This is why there can only be one Ironman. *vehement nodding*

In terms of electricity, what constitutes The Simpsons that I seem to see on my television screen?

[…]

Why is it not possible to take a song from my iPod via syringe and inject it into my car radio?

Exactly! :-)

Well, if Integral Yoga allows one to eliminate ejaculations, I imagine it could also be used to eliminate periods.

There is no such thing as an evolutionary thrust. No such term exists; it doesn’t make sense.

And what of shrubbery?

So much win in this thread lately!

I see in you a mighty inferiority complex and a crude intellect at work.

You see a mirror.

I was fine discussing science, mind-matter, ethics et al

You haven’t been discussing them at all. You have been asserting them – and failed to provide the slightest evidence for any of your claims!

Just saying “this is so, and this is so, and this is so, and that is so” is not a discussion. It’s a sign of massive stupidity, I’m afraid.

I was shocked and felt like puking on hearing his uncivilized words

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

PZ is a scientist. He has trained long and hard to call a spade a spade. Why are you surprised when he calls a moron a moron?

I suspect you wouldn’t be banned for merely disagreeing with PZ. I think you’d be banned because of your repetitive fuckwittery and inability (or lack of desire) to show evidence to support the silly woo you believe in.

Exactly. Boring everyone to tears with endless repetitions of stupidity is a banning offense.

Does this response mean you now see the light, understand that you’ve been spouting unsupported bullshit, and are going to go away for the time-out PZ suggested?
Just asking bc your nonsense has grown tiresome.

From now on, if Dr Myers permits my posts to go through, I will not be responding to questions on yoga or will rarely touch upon them and that too only if it is relevant to the context.

I hope you guys, gals, eunuchs, gays and bisexuals understand my delicate position given the lack of free thinking and unwillingness to explore new ideas through logic (on this shallow blog) that goes against the rigid views of the establishment.

Dr Jagdish Chandra Bose demonstrated this fact through his crescographic and other experiments in the early 20th century

Trees are conscious? Surely you can produce a link to the scientific literature confirming this assertion. Wait, you didn’t even produce a link to whatever work done by Dr. Bose that you think supports your assertion. Do you understand why I’m asking for citations for your claims?

I hope you guys, gals, eunuchs, gays and bisexuals understand my delicate position given the lack of free thinking and unwillingness to explore new ideas through logic (on this shallow blog) that goes against the rigid views of the establishment.

You don’t understand ‘Freethought':

Freethought or free thought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds opinions should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or other dogmas.[1][2][3] The cognitive application of freethought is known as “freethinking”, and practitioners of freethought are known as “freethinkers”.

You hold to a particular dogma, spiritual woo-ish nonsense, in the face of all the scientific evidence against your beliefs. You’re doing the *opposite* of freethinking.

If you present new ideas that are supported by evidence-rather than anecdotes-you might find people more agreeable.

Indian Bengali scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose began to conduct experiments on plants in the year 1900. He found that every plant and every part of a plant appeared to have a sensitive nervous system and responded to shock by a spasm just as an animal muscle does. In addition Bose found that plants grew more quickly amidst pleasant music and more slowly amidst loud noise or harsh sounds. He also claimed that plants can “feel pain, understand affection etc.,” from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances. According to him, a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture.

One visitor to his laboratory, the vegetarian playwright George Bernard Shaw, was intensely disturbed upon witnessing a demonstration in which a cabbage had “convulsions” as it boiled to death.[4] Bose found that the effect of manures, drugs, and poisons could be determined within minutes, providing plant control with a new precision. He repeated his tests on metals, administering poisons to tin, zinc, and platinum, and obtained astonishing responses which, when plotted on a graph, appeared precisely like those of poisoned animals. In conclusion he said: “Do not these records tell us of some property of matter common and persistent? That there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law?”[5]

Influenced by Bose’s experiments, in the 1960s Cleve Backster, an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms….

Collect the masturbated semen from a man or masturbate yourself and then collect the semen in a bottle or a cup and insert the ejaculate in the vagina via a syringe or a thin hollow tube. If the female happens to be ovulating at the time, chances are she’ll get pregnant.

I won’t. The same dreary claims of the paranormal have been made over and over again for decades, rising up again after every debunking and being introduced as if fresh, new, and ‘cutting edge.’

sentient #264 wrote:

HERE’S THE LINK ON PLANT SENTIENCE – DR J C BOSE:

I have a question. It can’t have escaped your attention that this absolutely amazing discovery in the year 1900 has not been accepted by mainstream scientists, including the biologists who would presumably have the most to gain from it — research, grants, fame, new levels to explore, and so forth.

SENTIENT: Exactly. A university degree or loads of them does not mean a person is intelligent.

In the scale of intelligence and in intuitive terms, Dr J C Bose is way too superior to Dr P Z Myers.

Besides, unlike Dr P Z Myers, Dr Bose was a man of good breeding who never threatened to slap any of his critics nor did he abuse any of his opponents.

Dr Bose can be called a mystico-intellecual scientist in so many ways and a man of great culture.

However, where Bose is concerned, he was able to test out whacky ideas of consciousness appearing in a graded fashion as we progress from the inanimate to the lower living forms and on to higher sentient forms.

Besides, it is said that Bose was the one who invented wireless telecommunication while the credit went to Marconi.

Hey, you’re the one who brought up yogism, you can’t be put out if we decide to test your claims.

Me, I’m wondering about the next “evolutionary thrust”. Once humanity evolves into yogic consciousness (which primarily seems to involve doing away with pleasurable things like sleep and sex), then what? If we’re really improving in an evolutionary sense (and bear with me while I get terribly teleological), what would that mean? We’re already pretty good at reproducing and colonizing new biological niches. Too good, one might say. Is the next step in evolution being able to ensure that we colonize even more niches, like say, other planets? Is it where we live in harmony with the rest of the biosphere, for some definition of harmony? Or do we just get really arrogant on blogs?

(I know I’m being plenty off-topic here, but I’d just like to get him to stop writing about semen.)

Between this and the Richard Sherman thing, I’m really starting to get tired of the word “class” and really starting to be convinced that no one can give a real and consistent definition of it, let alone defend its necessity.

SASTRA: “I have a question. It can’t have escaped your attention that this absolutely amazing discovery in the year 1900 has not been accepted by mainstream scientists, including the biologists who would presumably have the most to gain from it — research, grants, fame, new levels to explore, and so forth.
Why do you think that is?”

SENTIENT: Nikola Tesla, the greatest inventor the world has known, was close to Swami Vivekananda and attended many of the highly informative mind-matter lectures given by Vivekananda in America and they had a close personal rapport as well. Tesla was deeply influenced by Vivekananda’s talks. QM in its elementary form has also arisen in mathematical form from the dualo-monistic ideas of the Vedanta and Heisenberg, Planck, Pauli, Oppenheimer, Bohm and other truly intelligent minds of the previous century were highly influenced by Vedanta and sought philosophical answers in the Vedanta to the mind-matter riddle and formulated many of their scientific ideas/thought experiments on the expositions of the Vedanta.

Why has J C Bose’s discoveries been ignored?

It’s because those with vested interests, like the notorious NWO cabal, and others with crass materialistic views wish to draw all attention to their way of thinking that mystical experience is mumbo jumbo and that consciousness is simply a product of brain chemicals when evidently they’ve failed to produce the faintest glimmer of life in raw chemicals in immature lab experiments. LMAO.

I challenge Dr Myers and others of his ilk to create life in a test tube from chemical chains that can be extracted from a living organism. Neither can these narrow scientific types create consciousness in machines nor transfer thoughts from one sentient subject to another nor bring a dead person back to life through electrochemical means.

I am NOT going to comment on Yoga for known reasons, unless absolutely necessarily and in a fitting context.

See, if you possess the innate capacity and are diligent and sincere then you can try experiencing the yoga through direct experiences on the various planes of consciousness, develop heightened faculties and know much about the mind-matter imbroglio…

It’s because those with vested interests, like the notorious NWO cabal,

NWO? It’s spelled “B.I.G”

and others with crass materialistic views wish to draw all attention to their way of thinking that mystical experience is mumbo jumbo and that consciousness is simply a product of brain chemicals when evidently they’ve failed to produce the faintest glimmer of life in raw chemicals in immature lab experiments.

“Mystical experiences are mumbo jumbo? Consciousness is brain activity? Not until you create an ape in a test tube!!!”

Well, in sentient’s defense we DID keep asking her/him repeated questions. If we had been being good minions, we would not have defied PZ and tempted sentient further along.

sentient #289 wrote:

It’s because those with vested interests, like the notorious NWO cabal, and others with crass materialistic views wish to draw all attention to their way of thinking that mystical experience is mumbo jumbo and that consciousness is simply a product of brain chemicals when evidently they’ve failed to produce the faintest glimmer of life in raw chemicals in immature lab experiments. LMAO.

Thank you.

I was wondering whether the point I’d made in the Mars rock post regarding “fear” being responsible for the stupefying blindness of scientists towards their own self-interest might be confirmed by sentient, but I see I underestimated her (him.) Instead it was double down on the conspiracy theory by adding in more details.

Astonishing that a “notorious NWO cabal” and unnamed others with crass materialist views would have been capable of so strongly influencing thousands and thousands of scientists for generation after generation from different countries around the world — all of them desperately seeking the next exciting new discovery — but accepting the astonishing does not appear to have been difficult for sentient.

QM in its elementary form has also arisen in mathematical form from the dualo-monistic ideas of the Vedanta and Heisenberg, Planck, Pauli, Oppenheimer, Bohm and other truly intelligent minds of the previous century were highly influenced by Vedanta and sought philosophical answers in the Vedanta to the mind-matter riddle and formulated many of their scientific ideas/thought experiments on the expositions of the Vedanta.

Funny, then, that QM isn’t even tangentially about minds.

It’s because those with vested interests, like the notorious NWO cabal

Honestly, I didn’t expect that sentient would become any funnier than he already was.

I challenge Dr Myers and others of his ilk to create life in a test tube from chemical chains that can be extracted from a living organism.

From a living organism!?!

I thought we had to make the entire organism from scratch!?!

In that case, why didn’t sentient accept the Venter Institute’s half-synthetic Mycoplasma mycoides, made from the DNA-less “protein ghost” of a Mycoplasma capricolum and a wholly synthetic genome?

Because that one has divided billions of times, as I fucking quoted in comment 130.

Astonishing that a “notorious NWO cabal” and unnamed others with crass materialist views would have been capable of so strongly influencing thousands and thousands of scientists for generation after generation from different countries around the world

Some hints to why your 3a is stupid: how is it that computers can recall information without entropic effects disrupting the data?
3b: its a variety of factors, such as constant use which increases neuronal connections, nutrition, genetics, and several others I cant recall at the moment.
4: entropy is staved off as long as the chemicals and nutrients required for the electrochemical activity of the neurons continues.

The brains electromagnetic field is a byproduct of how neurons work and isnt what constitutes human thoughts.

As Sentien, you said “I challenge Dr Myers and others of his ilk to create life in a test tube from chemical chains that can be extracted from a living organism

As palindrome, you said …to produce a complete living cell or a fully formed multicellular organism either from raw chemicals or from molecular chains extracted from a living entity.

[Bolding mine, in both quotes]

How do you think cloning works, exactly? It is the formation of a completely living cell from molecular chains extracted from a living entity, you dunce. That cell then develops into a multicellular organism. So your “challenge” was completed back in 1996. How can anyone be this supid?

*How do you think cloning works, exactly? It is the formation of a completely living cell from molecular chains extracted from a living entity, you dunce. That cell then develops into a multicellular organism. So your “challenge” was completed back in 1996. How can anyone be this supid?

I see our yogic visitor has yet to acquire the elementary decency to leave when their host has made quite clear their presence is not wanted, or to refrain from insulting people with learning disabilities.

Get back to us when one of your yogis creates a living cell using their “higher consciousness”, sentientcosmospalindrome. Then your “challenge” will have some bite to it. Meanwhile, biological science is advancing so rapidly that I would not be surprised to see a living cell built completely from raw materials not derived from an existing organism within the next 20 years. But I’m much more confident that if that does happen, fools like you and frauds like those you follow will simply shift the goalposts.

chigau:
Lack of sleep will make anyone cranky.
Lack of sleep for as long as palindromecosmossentient has gone would make anyone an asshole.
Oh, humans cannot go without sleep that long?
I guess for our sockpuppetting friend, being an asshole is their natural state.

Cloning a cell means to derive a population of cells from a single cell.

By that definition, pregnancy, or rather the development in utero of a foetus, is cloning. Try again.

My challenge is this – begin with individual chemical chains (proteins, peptides, neurotransmitters, vitamins etc) taken from the body and do not use a complete cell or fully formed cells to begin the cloning, or better still synthesize an entire cell from scratch in the lab and make it manifest sentience through whatever means available.

What you just did is a logical fallacy called “Moving the Goalposts”. You issued a challenge, it was answered, you then issued a subtly refined version of the challenge and pretended that your challenge hadn’t been answered.

You’re arguing dishonestly. Fuck off.

@chigau

His #321 does seem to be rather at odds with his claims of spiritual transcendence :)

Nick @320: I’ve come across this kind of nonsense before. Schrodinger certainly had a philosophical regard for the Upanishads (see here (PDF)), but the leap to ‘QM has arisen from…’ is absurd.

The 1979 physics Nobel was awarded to Salam, Weinberg and Glashow, for electroweak unification, a huge step towards the Standard Model. Salam was a devout Muslim, and Weinberg is an outspoken atheist;

I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

If any muslims or atheists claimed that the theory ‘arose’ from Salam’s or Weinberg’s beliefs or lack thereof, they should be mocked relentlessly.

depends, of course, on what you mean by “sentient”–frankly, I doubt even you know.

Or, revive a corpse?

ew. no.

Or, create mind in a petri dish of molecular chains?

nnooo…

The challenge is to produce a complete living cell or a fully formed multicellular organism either from raw chemicals or from molecular chains extracted from a living entity. Go down to the building blocks and begin from there.

That’s quite a challenge indeed, seeing as how that has never happened even once ever. (The evolution of the first living cells was incremental. Not like baking a cake.)

How do you think cloning works, exactly? It is the formation of a completely living cell from molecular chains extracted from a living entity

eh, palindrome is closer to correct on this. It takes a pre-existing living cell to clone a eukaryote from the DNA of another.

the processed information is relayed back to specific parts of the body via motor nerves and so it could be the case that processed information in the form of thoughts could radiate back into the environment via these these nerve endings as EM lines of force.

The challenge is to produce a complete living cell or a fully formed multicellular organism either from raw chemicals or from molecular chains extracted from a living entity. Go down to the building blocks and begin from there.

Why don’t you read this thread before you add to it? What made you overlook comments 130, 307, and so many others?

Since any sensors outside the brain would not be able to decipher individual neurons, you’re losing information. I don’t think we have enough information about the brain yet to know how much information is or is not radiated outside the brain into the surrounding space due to this lack of precision.

You have it backwards, young padawan. If information about individual neurons were radiated out of the skull, it would show up on MRI and PET scans.

what will you do, now that you have laughed your Air Force off?

He might, hypocritically, laugh his fucking ass off – unless he’s been using the abbreviation without knowing what it means, the same way he does with so many technical terms.

As far back as 1979, University of Colorado epidemiologist Nancy Wertheimer, Ph.D., firmly established a connection between low-voltage power lines in residential neighborhoods and instances of childhood leukemia. Her study showed that children living near these ordinary backyard variety power lines had three times the likelihood of developing childhood cancer. Larger gauge, high voltage transmission lines pose a much greater danger than typical backyard lines. Since then, many other studies have confirmed her findings and substantiated the link between 60hz AC electromagnetic radiation and increased risk of leukemia, lymphomas, and cancer of the brain and nervous system. Many scientists warn people not to live within 200 yards of high voltage power lines. Of 35 international research studies on electric field radiation, 33 established a conclusive link between brain tumors, leukemia, and other forms of cancer.

Human beings are, in reality, bio-electric machines usually operating at between 2 and 12 hz. Normal household current is 60hz and is completely incompatible and disruptive to the body’s natural electric frequency range, neural transmission system, and its sensitive neuro-chemical equilibrium. 60hz electromagnetic radiation penetrates the entire body and brain 24 hours a day.

Each cell in the body contains positive and negatively charged elements that are kept in a delicate balance on the inside and outside of the cell wall. Electromagnetic, ELF, and microwave radiation disorders and disrupts this critical balance and plays havoc with the millions of electrical impulses that the body uses to regulate all cellular activity. The random and unorganized photons radiating from these fields also act as electromagnetic ‘free radicals’ which are often stored in cells as significant electrostatic charges which can cause major dysfunction at the cellular, molecular, and atomic levels.

CONCLUSION: There’s no bar to EM energy leaving or entering the body. Human beings radiate as well as receive em energy from outside. Human being is simply an open system that is a specific energy arrangement made up of an ensemble of vibrating molecules in space-time and is closely tied with the fluxes and interactions of energy in the entire isolated system system we call the universe.

The unified field – the fabric of the universe that connects us all. Scientist are realizing that space is not empty space.

Stuart Hameroff M.D. – Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies: “There is something there. If we go down the scale in the emptiness eventually we come to a level “the fundamental level” of space – time geometry. Here we find information – a pattern – “the planck scale” which has been there since the BIG BANG”.

Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D: “There is no empty space. When we go down – down – down – there is vibrations – stuff popping – invisible connections – entanglement”.

John Hagelin, Ph.D: “It is like a thought wave – invisible state OR quantum wave function spread over space and time. “not a wave of matter” – by wave in what? In a universal ocean – an ocean of pure potentiality – a unified field – superstring field that of which we are all made of”.

Still nothing but lies and bullshit from the sockpuppet. Prima facie evidence you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Until you back EVERYTHING you say with peer reviewed scientific literature, you are dismissed as irrelevant. Don’t like being dismissed? Don’t post without solid scientific evidence….

This sad and pathetic spamming kook has a whole wall of comments that were caught by the filters. I am posting one here that was made around noon, and never appeared here.

UNCONDITIONAL APOLOGY TO DR P Z MYERS:

Respected Sir,

I offer an unconditional apology to you for the harsh words.

I stand by all my accusations but regret the rough language used.

It’s not in my nature to abuse people.

I believe in the policy of live and let live.

Isn’t variety the spice of life?

Underlying diversity is unity.

I am 28 years of age, an orphan since many years, live alone, ancestral faith Jewish, educated up to the master’s degree in a physical science at a famous science and technology institute in India whose difficult entrance exam in math, physics and chem would leave most university students anywhere in the world in a state of shock. I manage the substantial finances left behind by my late parents.

My experiences in yoga are what I have said they are in earlier posts and I have videographic, photographic and testimonial evidence to back up my claims.

I have suffered a lot in life and would have died on 3 occasions due to a certain guru to who I affiliated myself for a short time.

I will henceforth not post here under any alias.

I am sorry for violating your order.

I come online to divert attention from the psychological/emotional trauma that’s part and parcel of my life.